Today it has been announced that the Parliamentary Work and Pensions Committee is recalling IDS on Monday (3rd Feb 2014) to grill him in detail on the money wasted so far on Universal Credit (v1.0 written off and v2.0, the temporary fix) and why the new ‘digital solution’ (a.k.a. v3.0) will succeed when the previous two versions have failed to deliver…

Last year a wrangle between the NAO and the DWP delayed the sign-off of DWP’s accounts by 6 months. The accounts were finally sent to MPs just a few days before the Work & Pensions committee hearing where the Secretary of State, Iain Duncan Smith, revealed that £303m had been spent on developing the IT, and that £40m will be written off now, with £91m to be written off over the next 3 years with temporary IT used only until 2017.